‘Tis the Season to Keep the Christ in Chrysler, and Other Thoughts on Christmas, Xmas, the Reason, and the Season

Hark, a holiday!

Listen, I want to clear up a little something about the current seasonal festivities.

If you’re especially sensitive, please take a seat before reading further.

Jesus is not the reason for the season.

The winter solstice is the reason for the season.

But to give a messiah credit where credit is due, Jesus is the reason for Christmas.

“Christmas,” though, which more or less translates from various languages of old to Christ’s special church service, didn’t even exist until something like a thousand years after the little baby Jesus was born, which is so weird because it sure seems like he started Christmas right then and there in the stable that day, doesn’t it?

And then there’s only a 365.25% chance that Jesus was actually born on December 25th anyway—there are beaucoups of theories as to the season, month, date, and even the year that he was born and why the wise Christmas deciders even picked that day from literally hundreds of choices.

That’s right, fine people of the internet, the early historians didn’t fact-check their mess to the extent that we do nowadays.

Also, it’s technically not Christmas until… Christmas.

Up until December 25th, it’s actually more correct to greet someone with something other than “Merry Christmas,” because it’s not actually Christmas until, well, Christmas day.

Up until Christmas Day, it’s what the religions that made all this up in the first place call Advent, which is why Advent calendars are numbered from December 1st through the 24th.

So go ahead and wish people all the “Happy Holidays” you want. (Which literally means Happy Holy Days, so isn’t that nice?)

Yeah, you might run the risk of offending someone who has thin religious skin, but maybe you could strike up a conversation with them and say something like, “Hey, I’m wishing you Happy Holy Days here…” and see if they’re up for that.

After all, we’re talking holy days, not just one holy day. I mean, that’s a pretty cool way to look at it.

Come Christmas day, you can accurately start in on “Merry Christmas” if accuracy is even all that important to you, and if you want to be all Old Christmas about it, keep saying that through January 6th.

But whatever, say Merry Christmas all year long if you want to—Jesus is totally cool with all of it because that’s the kind of deity he is.

And then there’s the whole Twelve Days of Christmas thing.

Christmas Day is the “First day of Christmas” and January 6th is the “Twelfth day of Christmas.” This is what that long-ass song is about.

The Twelfth day of Christmas, January 6th, is called The Epiphany, or Three Kings Day— it’s when the Wise Men showed up to see the baby Jesus lo those twelve days after the blessed event.

Which is why, just because the presents are all opened and the house is a wreck by 10 a.m. and December 26th has all those good after-Christmas sales, some Christmas celebrators like Catholics, Episcopalians, and the Greek Orthodox folks aren’t done with Christmas on December 25th, but actually consider “Christmas” to be just getting started.

It’s all bundled in one convenient package.

See, the thing is, people all over the planet have been hopped up on the winter solstice since they started having celebrations and religions in the first place (thousands of years before the sweet little baby Jesus was a glimmer in his mama’s eye, in fact)…

And the Christmas-deciders-of-old (like, a mere 1,700-ish years ago) bundled Christmas in with the winter solstice on purpose, which was a pretty good marketing decision at the time.

Season’s Greetings and Happy Holidays.

Don’t you think it’s tiring when folks get defensive about the nice things people say to one another?

No

one, and I really do mean no one, is setting out this time of year to offend someone by smiling and saying something other than “Merry Christmas.”

The mean people will be more like, “Fuck you,” or something, so they’re pretty easy to spot.

(And some of them may not even be all that mean—maybe they’re just really, really sad and miss their daddy who passed away this time last year, or have never had any family at all, or something else just plain hard.)

There is no war on Christmas, other than the grotesque commercialization and capitalization of a religious event, I mean.

And people starting a war where there is none, I also mean.

Jesus taking the Chrysler today

It’s trifling, I tell you, trifling.

It’s trifling to get your knickers in a knot over shit like whether or not someone says Merry Christmas.

So don’t fall for it, y’all.

Like I said, this is a fucking hard time of year for a whole lot of people, and the last thing we all need is a bunch of thin-skinned, micro-managing, hyper-religious chicken littles lashing out, accusing perfectly kind people of being PC (politically correct, in case you forgot about this stupid phrase) for saying something nice.

To those folks I say, you’re the ones making up a war, so stop it.

So just be nice.

This whole thing reminds me of a young fella’ I worked with back in the nineties.

He was going off to college, so I wished him good luck. He responded that he didn’t believe in luck.

Then I said, “Well, okay… I wish you good fortune,” or something like that, to which he responded that he didn’t believe in fortune, either.

At that point, I said to the kid, “Well, then, the hell with you.”

I could have chosen my words better, but why bother? He couldn’t see fit to just say, “Thank you”?

Don’t be like that kid.

One more Xmas-y tidbit for ya’.

So here’s one more bonus thing you may or may not want to know, but I kinda like.

Maybe you’ve heard someone get testy when they see “Xmas” written instead of “Christmas” because it “takes the Christ out of Christmas”?

Well, guess what?

It doesn’t.

The “X” stands for the first letter of the Greek word for Christ, Greek being the language the New Testament was written in.

This is what the Greek looks like:

Χριστός.

It’s pronounced sort of like “Christos.”

In other words, Xmas is a legitimate abbreviation, and Jesus is not against abbreviations.

So it boils down to this.

Happy Holy Days to you and yours.

May all your season’s greetings be warmly received, and may the season indeed be holy for you.

And may you find a ten twenty dollar bill in your pocket any day now.

And may you overeat to your heart’s content and not gain an ounce during these holy days.

I hate to be That Guy but I do statistics all day every day and I have to point out something in your latest blog post. The chance of Jesus being born on a particular day is 1 out of 365.25, or 1/365.25, or 0.002737851 which means it’s about a 0.2738% chance of that. 365.25% is better than 100%, which in terms of probabilities isn’t even a concept. Something can only be 100% probably (a certainty) and no more. Sorry… I realize that’s about the least important part of the whole post!

Which is clearly why I don’t have a job doing statistics all day. So I guess I should have said there’s only a .2738% chance of Jesus being born on Dec. 25th, but that doesn’t sound nearly as dramatic. (I suppose because it’s not!)

You tell it, Coco!!! I’ve been trying to spread this gospel for the past umpteen years! People just fall into that unquestioning trap and follow the other lemmings off the cliff. Loved reading this! Keep up the good work!!

Aw, shucks, Tom, thanks for the back-up. You’re right and it’s frustrating–the lemming behavior drives me nuts. I just keep reminding myself that the good is always right, even when the wrong looks like it’s winning. Let’s keep the faith, shall we?

You’re right about Black Friday, Nancy, and I do feel for the merchants whose livelihood depends on days like this, but I, too, stay home on Black Friday. I just don’t have what it takes. Retail competitiveness is not in my nature!

The rest of the season, however, is a lot more low-key and festive and full of peace and love.

So now we know! I do have to add that if you shop on Back Friday- it is like a war zone and there aren’t many friendly people and most are all elbows and body blocks and some are downright hurtful. That’s why I stay home after Thanksgiving- no shopping for me- I like peace and love.